Tuesday, March 31, 2015

It seems to me that the media/elite freakout over the Indiana law is a moral panic analogous to the freakout over the UVA rape case. People rushed like lemmings to endorse as true something that turned out to be a hoax because it confirmed their prejudices about Bad Classes of People. This is why so many in the media are making no pretense to be fair in their reporting and commentary on the Indiana law. As Mollie Hemingway avers, the most interesting — and most worrying — aspect of all this is that religious liberty is not considered to be important at all to very many people in this country, especially the most powerful people.

Notre Dame’s Pat Deneen wrote this weekend on Facebook that law school friends tell him of plans underway now by progressive law profs to “Bob Jones” churches and religious institutions that have policies they consider discriminatory against LGBT people. That is, they want to campaign to take away tax exempt status from all religious entities that have traditional views and practices related to homosexuality. This is the next frontier. Many churches and religious entities operate so close to the margins, budget-wise, that they will not be able to survive this.

This is coming. Remember when they told us that SSM would not affect the rest of us? Do you now see that this was a lie? As I have been saying:

The Law Of Merited Impossibility is an epistemological construct governing the paradoxical way overclass opinion makers frame the discourse about the clash between religious liberty and gay civil rights. It is best summed up by the phrase, “It’s a complete absurdity to believe that Christians will suffer a single thing from the expansion of gay rights, and boy, do they deserve what they’re going to get.”

If the Indiana witch hunt doesn’t convince you of the truth of the Law of Merited Impossibility, you are deluded.

The real deal is this: People in flyover country are being told the terms of their surrender. This is not about “toleration” and never has been. It’s about the attempt to force people, against their conscience, to approve of homosexual acts and gay “marriage”.

The reality is that the vast majority of the people this law means to protect are not interested in quizzing strangers about their sex lives and then punishing tthem. Nobody goes into a grocery or hardware store and gets grilled on whether they are gay and nobody wants to know. But the goal of gay lobby is to target people likely to have qualms of conscience about appearing to support gay “marriage”–people who have real issues of conscience–and use the cudgel of the state force them to give the appearance of approval to what they are regard as sin. It’s a form of bullying, something the gay lobby talks about constantly and practices skillfully.

Hence the moral panic as businesses like Apple, which have no trouble trading with Communist butchers in China (and exploiting slave labor there) or gay-murdering butchers in the U.A.E. suddenly develop a “conscience” and bravely face the applause of the Chattering Classes in the US. Here in Washington (which has an RFRA on the books) themayor of Seattle is jumping on the moral panic bandwagon (as the shipping containers from China fill up our port). Hysterical Lefties now do their best Glenn Beck imitation andcompare Christians with a tender conscience to Nazis (threatening that it “will not end well”) for them. Because if you can’t target some mom and pop Christian bakery in Bloomington, smash them with the iron rod of the state (instead of just going to the bakery down the street), and drive them into destitution, you might as well just gas everybody now. By such low tactics (from people who talk perpetually about “bullying“), the Girardian scapegoat will again be sacrificed as the community expends its fury on another in a long trail of designated Emmanuel Goldsteins in order to assure itself of its moral purity.

But no real justice will have been done. The people who do not and never will be able to pretend that gay “marriage” is real or that homosex is not sinful will go on doing so. Power will have been exercised, but not justice. Gay “marriage” remains what it always has been: an ontological impossibility. And gay sex remains what it has always been: intrinsically disordered. No amount of force, fear, and intimidation will change that. Nor will endless attempts to link this to Jim Crow work.

Monday, March 30, 2015

There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country.

A wave of legislation, introduced in more than two dozen states, would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors. Some, such as the bill enacted in Indiana last week that drew a national outcry and one passed in Arkansas, say individuals can cite their personal religious beliefs to refuse service to a customer or resist a state nondiscrimination law.

Others are more transparent in their effort to discriminate. Legislation being considered in Texas would strip the salaries and pensions of clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — even if the Supreme Court strikes down Texas’ marriage ban later this year. In total, there are nearly 100 bills designed to enshrine discrimination in state law.

These bills rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear. They go against the very principles our nation was founded on, and they have the potential to undo decades of progress toward greater equality.

America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business. At Apple, we are in business to empower and enrich our customers’ lives. We strive to do business in a way that is just and fair. That’s why, on behalf of Apple, I’m standing up to oppose this new wave of legislation — wherever it emerges. I’m writing in the hopes that many more will join this movement. From North Carolina to Nevada, these bills under consideration truly will hurt jobs, growth and the economic vibrancy of parts of the country where a 21st-century economy was once welcomed with open arms.

Apple has never had an official retail presence of any kind in the Middle East, until now. Thanks to a deal struck with Jarir Bookstore, Apple is directly providing its products in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi Arabian government cleared Apple to operate in the country a couple of months ago. The agreement with Jarir will have Apple working with Saudi Arabia’s largest books and electronics retailer.

Previously, Jarir had to go through third-party vendors to get its hands on Apple products, which took three to six months. Apple will not only be supplying Jarir directly, but also offer technical support for Saudi customers. Jarir will be able to sell Apple hardware at cheaper prices now that it doesn’t have to go through third-party providers.

Apple opened up the iTunes Store in the Middle East in December of 2012. It was reported in 2011 that Apple was opening up its first Middle Eastern retail store in Dubai, but that didn’t pan out.Tim Cook visited the United Arab Emirates earlier this year to discuss how Apple can develop its relationships with carriers in nearby countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Nigeria. “We are all about making great products that people don’t know they need today but when they have them, they can’t live without,” said Cook at the time. “We would like to bring our passion to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Africa.”

I expect to read soon about how Mr. Cook will be bringing his "passion" against religious based discrimination to the Middle East.

Because Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz killed himself when he purposefully drove a plane carrying 149 other people into a mountain in the Alps, there has been an assumption that he suffered from “depression”— an assumption strengthened by the discovery of antidepressants in his home and reports that he had been treated in psychiatry and neurology clinics. Many patients and other interested parties are rightly concerned that Lubitz’s murderous behavior will further stigmatize the mentally ill.

It is certainly true that stigma may lead those in need to avoid treatment. When I was a psychiatrist at an HIV clinic, I was baffled by the shame associated with a visit to see me. Patients at the clinic had advanced AIDS, often contracted through IV drug use or sex work, and many had unprotected sex despite their high viral loads. Some were on parole. Many had lost custody of their children. Many lived in notorious single-room occupancy housing and used cocaine daily. But these issues, somehow, were less embarrassing than the suggestion that they be evaluated by a psychiatrist.

For my clinic patients, it was shameful to be mentally ill. But to engage in antisocial behavior as a way of life? Not so bad.

I think my patients were on to something. Bad behavior—even suicidal behavior—is not the same as depression. It is a truism in psychiatry that depression is underdiagnosed. But as a psychiatrist confronted daily with “problem” patients in the general hospital where I work, I find that depression is also overdiagnosed. Even doctors invoke “depression” to explain anything a reasonable adult wouldn’t do.

For instance: Act completely blasé, then lock the pilot out of the cockpit, and deliberately crash a plane full of people.

I don’t know what that is, but it’s not depression.

In the hospital where I practice, a small but regular population of patients are young men who sustained gunshot wounds during or in proximity to gang-related activities. Now paralyzed, they are admitted for pressure ulcers or urinary tract infections. These men were accustomed to getting their needs met through intimidation and even murder. Now they are dependent on nurses and aides for intimate care, and it hasn’t made them any nicer. They terrorize staff by throwing urinals and food and sexually harassing them. When I am asked to evaluate for “depression,” I see hopelessness, entitlement, and rage.

And it’s not just antisocial behavior that is explained away by calling it “depression.” I’m often asked to see patients with poorly managed chronic diseases; for example, diabetics who neglect to do fingersticks to draw blood and test their blood sugar. Recently I did a consultation for a patient who is on dialysis and ignores the low-salt “renal diet” prescribed by her doctor. Her insistence on eating chips led her nephrologist to wonder if she were depressed; after all, wouldn’t a mentally healthy person give up junk food to save her own life?

We are experiencing the effects of a culture that can rationalize away any behavior and, as a result, minimize evil.

We may never know why Lubitz decided to not only end his life but the lives of 149 other people in any secular sense but... we should all agree that what he did is inexcusably wicked.

Or is that in and of itself wicked?

I can't help but think of Elizabeth Scalia's Strange Gods, Unmasking the Idols of Everyday Life (I wrote about that book here). Every attempt is being made to mask our need for God and particularly His Son Jesus Christ. In His place we are putting every sort of substitute and paying the price.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Most non-Catholics will take up the fashionable cry, “Who are you to judge?!” whenever anyone disapproves of anything these days. If the prevailing philosophy in our society is relativism, then “Who are you to judge?!” is the logical response to make. If there is no such thing as truth then there is no such thing as right or wrong. If there is no such thing as right or wrong, then we may do as we like and you are not to judge me and I am not to judge you. Live and let live.

Yes, but.

Catholics insist that we can make judgements. We make an objective judgement about an action but we do not make a judgement on the person or on the eternal destiny of their soul.

This is the distinction that many secularists and Protestants fail to make. They think that if you judge an action to be wrong, that you must therefore judge the person, condemn the person, isolate and finally eliminate the person.

Catholics should be able, however to step back from judging the person and separate out the action from the individual.

...

Consequently, Catholics are able to make judgements about much more thorny moral issues with objectivity and a shrug of the shoulders because while we judge an action we do not judge the person’s guilt. We do not make a definitive judgement on the person’s guilt because we do not know al the circumstances and motivation.

Most non-Catholics do not understand these distinctions and therefore misunderstand Catholic judgements in two destructive and opposite ways.

Firstly, when they hear us make a judgment about the objective right-ness or wrong-ness of an action they think we are making a judgement on the culpability of the person, and not just the person’s culpability, but also their worth as a person, whether they are a nice person or not or whether we like them or not. So if I say, “Living together before marriage is wrong.” All they hear is a personal judgement and rejection of the person. No matter how much I make the statement objective and non judgmental they hear otherwise.

Secondly, when we do not make a judgement of the person they accept it as condoning the action–which we might very well wish to condemn. So when Pope Francis rightly said he did not judge the gay person the world heard him saying that he did not condemn homosexual actions. Wrong response. He was simply being Catholic in not judging the gay person’s culpability, but if anyone had said, “So Hoy Father does that mean you approve of gay sex?” He would have immediately corrected them.

So can we judge? Yes. We can judge whether an action is objectively right or wrong. We do so not out of our own personal opinion, but based on natural law and divine revelation.

Do we judge the guilt of the person, rejecting or accepting them because of their decision? No. That’s not for us to do either in this world or in the next.

Stuff that ought to be inwardly digested by every thinking and sincere believer yet likely to be ignored by every non-thinking relativist... and sadly, lots of folks who are simply misinformed and care little about changing that state.

Remember that those who loved him and promised loyalty also abandoned him, denied him, and betrayed him.

And if you want to know who did that, just look at the palm branches in our hands.

We are guilty.

While we may not want to admit it, Christ’s Passion goes on today. Our betrayal of him continues, in ways large and small.

How often do we praise God on Sunday…and damn Him on Monday?

How often do we shrug Him off when things become too difficult or the rules too hard or the demands of the Christian life too taxing?How often do we treat love as just a sentiment for greeting cards, and not a command for living?

How often do we see suffering in the faces of those in need, and simply turn away?

Christ continues to bleed and weep and cry out, “Why have you abandoned me?” He cries out today to us. Whatever you do to the least of these, he said, you do to me.

What do we do?

We encounter him on the subway, step over him on the sidewalk, and go out of our way to avoid him when we feel like he might make demands on our time.

At the office, we make jokes at his expense, or spread gossip about him at the water cooler. We suck up to people who are more popular, or attractive, or influential at work – and barely give the unimportant person who answers the phone the time of day.

Whether we realize it or not, we see Jesus every day, read about him in the papers, hear about him in the news. He is everywhere there is someone who is small, or neglected, or disrespected, or discarded.

He is with the unwanted and unloved, the bullied and abused.

“Why have you abandoned me?”

Do we hear him?

We find ways to justify our choices. But it can’t be denied. Whenever we choose death over life, sin over the gospel, popularity over integrity, indifference or disdain over love – in short, whenever we have turned away from Christ – we who claim to believe in him have, instead, betrayed him.

We have said, “Give us Barabbas.”

We have said, in effect, “Crucify him.”

And we have done it with palms in our hands and the echoes of “Hosanna” in the air.

We need this Sunday to remember that.

Here's hoping we'll each take a minute today to ponder the day's meaning and be changed in some way by that pondering.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Murder will not be among the charges filed Friday by Boulder County's District Attorney against the woman accused of attacking a pregnant woman and cutting the unborn child from her womb.

Dynel Lane, 34, was arrested last week after she allegedly brought the deceased fetus to the hospital. According to the arrest report, Lane admitted to a detective that she cut open the victim's abdomen to remove it. Staff at the hospital said the baby would have been viable.

After the announcement of the arrest, District Attorney Stan Garnett said he would wait for the results of an autopsy before deciding if Lane should be charged with murder.

"The issue of whether or not murder charges are appropriate involving a case involving the death of a fetus or late-term pregnancy is always a difficult issue," he said last week. "Under Colorado law, there's no way murder charges can be brought if it is not established that the fetus lived as a child outside the body of the mother for some period of time. I don't know the answer yet as to whether that could be established – what our facts are here. One of the issues that we will need to evaluate in connection with that is the medical information from the autopsy."

Thursday evening, Garnett's office confirmed to 7NEWS that murder will not be among the charges filed during a hearing on Friday.

Since he has decided not to charge Lane with murder of the fetus, Garnett is likely to charge her with unlawful termination of a pregnancy and other charges stemming from the attack on the expectant mother.

AB 6221 passed the State Assembly 94-49, and would expand the leniency for third trimester abortions. If AB 6221 passes the Senate and becomes law, the wording of the abortion statute will allow full-term abortions as long as it’s “relevant to the well-being of the patient.”

Reasons included under the new language would be, emotional, familial, age, physical, or psychological. So for example, if a potential mother feels she’s not “emotionally stable” to handle a baby two weeks before birth, New York will allow her to have an abortion. In addition, it would allow these procedures to be performed by non-doctors who would inject poison into the full-term fetuses heart to stop it.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

On Jan. 17, 2014, University of Pennsylvania runner Madison Holleran committed suicide. She was 19. Since this tragedy, the sports community has struggled to address the root cause of Holleran's death: mental health.

To gauge the current climate inside locker rooms, FOX Sports interviewed more than 25 female student-athletes along with NCAA officials and mental health experts. Though these student-athletes told stories of resilience, they also revealed cautionary tales for the well-being of young women in college sports.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, women are "nearly twice as likely" as men to develop depression, anxiety and eating disorders. Add in the stress of sports commitments and you have a dangerous combination. The majority of women interviewed pointed to eating disorders related to their sport as the top issue.

"We talk about [body image] every day,"said a group of University of Southern California lacrosse players. Anorexia or bulimia is twice as rampant among athletes versus the general population of women, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD).

The pressures of women to gain muscle in training but stay thin to uphold a standard of beauty outside of sports is irreconcilable. "I've never met a gymnast who was in love with their body," a former D-I gymnast revealed.

In sports, the private issue of women's body image becomes public. Dartmouth volleyball player Alexandra Schoenberger's trainers would hook her up to a machine to track changes in her body fat percentage, which sounded like the sports equivalent of the "jiggle test."

A D-I swimmer recalled men wore T-shirts that read "Whale watching" in reference to her team. Even in the coverage of Holleran's death, many were shocked to see the media use photos of the young woman wearing a bikini, taken from her Instagram account.

Bottom line, mental health is a matter of safety, not only because of suicide risk but also the detriment to long-term physical health. Eating disorders are common causes of heart problems and osteoporosis. Anorexia and bulimia have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness according to ANAD. More women have eating disorders than breast cancer, yet every major women's and men's sport has a pink ribbon campaign while mental health issues go unnoticed.

So where do these student-athletes go for help?

The piece goes on to chronicle how most student-athletes do not avail themselves to on campus psychological services because of the stigma associated with mental illness which I'll admit is problematic but there's an additional service I think most of these women are ignoring that is even more detrimental.

I wish someone would do a study (and perhaps they already have and I'm simply unaware) of the effects on the human psyche not having a religious foundation is having on these women, particularly those who struggle with body image and how others see them.

This bald paunchy guy with a big nose, no butt and buck teeth has overcome these 'failings' by coming to believe (late admittedly) that I am created by God, with all my flaws, for divine reasons and that my focusing less on what I look like and more on understanding those reasons and pursuing them with vigor brings the kind of contentedness and fulfillment I'll not find anywhere else.

How would most women cope with notional concepts of body image should they adopt the same mentality?

I think this to be a fair question but one society will ignore because of the stigma religion now has in this culture. Or... because... I'm a guy and a religious one to boot.

I was a Starbucks barista for years in college, and when I heard about the RaceTogether campaign I literally winced. There is not enough tip money in the universe to compensate baristas for making complicated drinks in 3 minutes while striking up corporate-forced conversations on an incredibly sensitive topic with complete strangers. And no amount of extra shots or drizzles of caramel can make up for some poor person’s day being ruined by getting the Racial Inquisition when all they really wanted was a cup of freaking coffee.

Honestly. Honestly.

It’s not just that the setting is massively inappropriate, nor that being forced to transcend the boundaries of a relationship based entirely on a monetary transaction is irritating as shit. What is so mind-numbingly stupid about their quickly-pulled campaign is captured beautifully in this candid moment on MSNBC:

This is now where we are in the national conversation on race. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream is still so far from coming true that it seems impossible it ever will. No one is judging each other by the content of their character. Nancy Giles didn’t even allow judgement on the content of Jay Smooth’s words without pointing back to the color of his skin. Our myopic obsession with talking about race on the national level has turned our country into a gross parody of the country the Civil Rights Movement fought for. Instead of letting go of race we’ve got a stranglehold on it. Instead of being color-blind, color is all we see. Even Nancy Giles complained that people have lambasted her for being a black woman who talks like a white woman, and have accused her of wanting to be white.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Police have arrested a woman after witnesses say she threw a Molotov cocktail-type device at people holding a prayer vigil at a South Austin Planned Parenthood on Monday, according to an arrest affidavit.

Police said 52-year-old Melanie Maria Toney threw the object out the passenger side window of her car where two anti-abortion protesters standing outside of the clinic at 201 East Ben White Boulevard around 6:30 p.m. Monday.

One of the protesters, Ruth Allwein, said she was praying in the grassy area as a volunteer with Texas Alliance for Life when she saw Toney throw the bottle.

"It looked like some sort of bottle, and it had an ignited wick in it, so my first instinct was backing away," said Allwein.

Allwein said she stomped out the fire and pulled out the wick to make sure the fire did not make contact with the contents of the bottle. The affidavit states the flaming item was a "Gum Out" fuel additive bottle with a burned piece of paper towel that had been rolled into a wick and lit on fire, a Molotov cocktail-type device.

Toney admitted to throwing a bottle out the window with some paper in it and said it "might" have been smoldering when she threw it.

Toney is charged with aggravated assault.

Imagine for a moment the outcry had it actually been the abortion clinic that was targeted, and not a group of people praying at that clinic.

But instead, there's nothing to see here folks. Nothing at all. We came close to being awash in stories focused on the latest battle of the war on women but... because these were women who were praying for victims rather than preying on victims, there's no there there.

Two Bay Area lawmakers are seeking an investigation of working conditions at high schools administrated by the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, over the archbishop’s proposed morality clauses for teachers.

“California cannot become a laboratory for discrimination under the guise of religion,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter sent Monday. They said the rules “set a dangerous precedent for workers’ rights through manipulations of law that deprive employees of civil rights guaranteed to all Californians.”

Last week, Ting and Mullin were among eight Bay Area lawmakers who sent Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone a letter calling the proposal “divisive” and urging him to drop the clauses from the teachers’ handbook.

The archbishop’s proposal asks “administrators, faculty and staff of any faith or of no faith, are expected to arrange and conduct their lives so as not to visibly contradict, undermine or deny” church teachings, including opposition to abortion, contraception and homosexuality.

First they satisfied themselves with a letter. Now they're looking to use their power to launch investigations. What comes tomorrow?

A dark cloud for anyone who believes in the notion of religious liberty.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Hypocrisy is the charge frequently claimed to be the reason why many decide to abandon regular Church attendance or to abandon organized religion altogether. Or more pointedly, to belittle those in the faith who make mistakes or don't live up to perceived standards.

Hypocrisy may be among the easiest charges any American can let fly at another, and get away with it, even when the charge is untrue. For many, hypocrisy has become the replacement red-letter for sin. It is deemed, in many circles, that actual sin is less sinful than the supposed “hypocrisy” of those who condemn sin, and yet still sin. If you look around you will see that this is true on many levels, and that quite frequently the person who calls someone else, or some other group hypocritical is frequently a fairly serious sinner of some sort, but who seeks to gain a higher, elitist, arrogant and condescending position over whomever he is calling hypocritical.

Regular church goers, for instance, are considered by some non-church goers to be hypocrites, because they go to church regularly, and yet their human imperfections remain visible to their accusers. “At least I don’t pretend to be a good Christian” say this level of the masters of hypocrisy. Another way of saying that same sentence is “I am not a good Christian, and the ones who go to church are not much better.” Who’s the real hypocrite here? Would it not be more honest to simply say “I am no Christian and I ignore Christian rules of conduct.?” But, you see, it sounds better, and it feels better, to lower others in the estimation of the world, and thus raise yourself in the estimation of the world.

At another level, among the newer Protestant “denominations” of Christianity are those that like to call themselves non-denominational. Some Christians even go so far as to loudly proclaim themselves to be”non-church affiliated,” as if that were a good thing to be. What it actually means is that these “Christians” are not going to be bound by any rules established by any church, and therefore, they can make up their own moral code of conduct. Or, even worse, each “member” makes up his own personal morality. It’s very easy to live within the rules when you are the one who makes them up.

...

So a self-interested morality is a short-term, purely survival-mode guide for an individual. But man is a social animal, and if he wants a better long-term morality for something more than temporary survival, then he needs a non-self-centered set of rules of conduct, if he wants to ever get out of survival mode and prosper. And this is just discussing theworldly necessity for rules that originate outside of ourselves. There is still the immortal soul to consider.

What about God?

Look at history for the story of what happened whenever Western man abandoned God and His law, and what the consequences were. What is often most irksome to me is how many detractors of Christianity refer to how Christianity, or, Christian Society, committed the many atrocities of the 20th century. But the perpetrators were not Christians; they were Marxists, and atheists. They rejected Jesus Christ, and God, and religion in general. Mussolini. Hitler. Stalin. These were certainly among the greatest mass-murderers and brutal conquerors in all of history. They were no Christians, they were atheists; - they rejected Christianity andturned away from it. And we can still see the results.

Is it time for you to come back to church, or are you perfect? Maybe all those church-goers aren’t perfect, but then, maybe they go to church regularly in the effort to become more perfect. In becoming more perfect, maybe they help our culture to become more perfect. Where are you in all of this? How do you view the rest of us? And, most importantly –

… what about God?

It's imperative that we who publicly profess faith in God [strive to*] live lives that withstand scrutiny but it's as necessary to acknowledge that our sinful natures will inevitably lead to occasionally falling short.

Those who are quick to judge our hypocrisy should, upon further reflection and deeper thought, see how convenient it is to use those faults as excuses from seeing, and perhaps more importantly, dealing, with their own shortcomings.

BERKELEY, Calif., March 11, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — On April 16-17, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at Pacific School of Religion will host a symposium addressing the ways in which the concept of “religious liberty” is being used to justify and further discriminatory actions, such as denying service to same sex couples or limiting the reproductive health care benefits for employees. “Religious liberty should emphasize our freedoms — the right to worship, to self-expression — and should never be used as an excuse for discrimination against any group of people,” states Dr. Bernard Schlager, executive director of CLGS and Dean of Pacific School of Religion.

The focus of the symposium will be to articulate a theologically-based and positive definition of religious liberty that explains why religious liberty should not be used as a license to discriminate. The symposium will also consider how the concept of religious liberty can be used to further religious pluralism in the United States.

This is the next step in the fight. It never was going to be enough for progressives to get gay marriage and discrimination against LGBTs outlawed except for within religious organizations. Now the push from progressive elites will be to tear down the wall protecting religious liberty to punish the wrongthinkers. If you don’t think this is coming, you are a fool. The Law of Merited Impossibility is vindicated more and more each day.

Time to lawyer up with the Becket Fund and other religious liberty legal organizations. This is where the battle is now.

I see a day coming, sooner rather than later, where faithful people will be punished for holding to traditional beliefs, where discrimination against them (us) will not only be encouraged but demanded.

Monday, March 23, 2015

It was more than five years ago that the gunshots rang out, but those of us who survived can still hear their echoes. On Nov. 5, 2009, an Army psychiatrist named Nidal Hasan—an American radicalized by extremist Islamic beliefs—opened fire on his fellow soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 14 people, including an unborn child, and wounding 32.

I was there. A beloved friend, Capt. John Gaffaney, died at my knees. I was slated to become the shooter’s direct supervisor and later learned I was at the top of his hit list.

That day has faded from the minds of most Americans. But the survivors and the families of the deceased continually relive its horror. They also continue to face betrayal by the government they served.

***

At about 1:34 p.m., Hasan, seated in a building on base and armed with an FN five-seven pistol and a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, paused to bow his head. Then he stood up from behind a cubicle, shouted “Allahu akbar!” (God is great) and began spraying bullets throughout the room. Soldiers, including my friend John, charged the shooter but were gunned down before they could reach him.

Hasan took direct aim at those in uniform, including 21-year-old Pvt. Francheska Velez, who had disarmed bombs in Iraq and recently learned she was nine weeks pregnant. One survivor testified that she heard Velez plead, “Please don’t, please don’t. My baby, my baby!” Hasan shot her in the chest. Velez was headed home to Chicago for leave. Instead, she and her child died on the floor at Fort Hood.

The shooter continuously reloaded his weapons as unarmed soldiers tried to escape. After he left the building to continue his rampage, others dashed inside, secured the doors with a belt and began rendering emergency treatment. The floor was so slick with blood that those responding later said they found it hard to reach the wounded and dying.

Hasan exchanged gunfire outside with civilian police Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who was struck in the thigh and femur. As she fell, her weapon reportedly jammed and the shooter kicked it from her grasp. Finally, 10 minutes after the massacre began, Hasan was downed by five shots from another civilian police officer, Sgt. Mark Todd, and taken into custody.

Investigators found 146 shell casings inside the building and another 68 in the surrounding area. The shooter had almost as many unused rounds, 177, tucked in his pockets in 20- and 30-round extended magazines.

Hasan’s goal was to kill as many soldiers as possible. He was cold-eyed and systematic. We should have seen him coming.

The FBI and the Defense Department possessed sufficient information, collected over several years, to have detected Hasan’s radicalization. During his training, Hasan routinely and unmistakably violated strict standards by communicating with suspected terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki—email that the FBI intercepted. In 2007 he was required for his residency to give a scholarly psychiatric presentation. Instead he lectured on Islam, stating that nonbelievers should be beheaded and set on fire, and suggested that Muslim-Americans in the military pose a risk of fratricide. In another talk, Hasan justified suicide bombings on grounds that the U.S. is at war with Islam.

Both an instructor and a colleague referred to Hasan as a “ticking time bomb.” But his shocking conduct was ignored. Officer-evaluation reports “sanitized his obsession with violent Islamist extremism into praiseworthy research on counterterrorism,” a 2011 congressional review states. Political correctness, to which the military continues to bow, led many to fear that reporting Hasan would result in career-ending charges of racial or religious discrimination.

***

It is a gross miscarriage of justice that no one who supervised the shooter—overlooked his behavior and promoted him—has been held accountable.

Every epoch, including our own, has its own idols. One of our challenges is to find ways to avoid the Gospels being shackled in service to them.

Political correctness is one of the idols or secular sins of our times. Sometimes it is described as being trendy, up-to-date, attuned to the times and worthy of praise. Political correctness is not the same as being stylish or following the fads in the clothing industry. There is correctness there, but it is not political. It is different from the cultural norms of society, which involve customs and mores. European society is different from African society. The difference is not about political correctness. New England hospitality is different from southern hospitality. That is not about political correctness. Political correctness has to do with movements that set a new social standard to be imposed on others by an elite group. What makes it a scourge is that it insists on forced conformity for the sake of conformity.

Political correctness has been around for centuries. What is new in this post-modern age is the use of super sophisticated tools of social manipulation to help people gradually change their view without being conscious of these efforts of social manipulation.

...

Pope John Paul II reminded the bishops of Ireland in June 1999: "Christianity teaches the truth, a truth which, we ourselves, have not devised, but which comes to us as a gift . . . " He then added that they should "proclaim the truth courageously, even if what you teach sometimes goes against socially accepted opinion."

In Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II said: "If there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power".

The Greek Philosopher Aristotle (394-322 B.C.) observed that no person deliberately chooses to be unhappy. So, if this is the case, then human beings wish to be happy and the search for happiness leads us to look at what kinds of happiness there might be and whether these types might be logically rank-ordered.

From reviewing Greek and later Christian writers it may be observed that happiness has four levels. These may be described as follows (in ascending order).

laetus: Happiness in a thing. Thus, "I see the linguini, I eat the linguini, it makes me feel good, I am happy." This kind of happiness is based on something external to the self, is short-lived and, on reflection, we do not consider that it is all there is to human happiness.

felix: The happiness of comparative advantage. "I have more of this than X." "I am better at this than X." This kind of happiness results from competition with another person. The self is seen in terms of how we measure up to others. It has been called "the comparison game." Such happiness is rather unstable and, if one fails, can lead to unhappiness and sense of worthlessness. Exclusive pursuit tends to oppress others. Most people would not imagine a world as satisfactory if it was composed of only happiness #2 type people.

Beatitudo: (Beatitudo = happiness or blessedness). The happiness that comes from seeing the good in others and doing the good for others. It is, in essence, other-regarding action. Happiness #3 is, in some sense, at war with happiness #2. One cannot be at the same time in competition with someone else and doing the good for and seeing the good in them. Most people would prefer a world (community, family, relationships) structured around the pursuit of happiness #3 than entirely based in happiness #2. Happiness #3 is higher than happiness #2. The problem with #3 is that it is necessarily limited. We cannot be someone else's everything. For example, we or they, will die and if our happiness is contingent upon them, it dies with them. "There must be more than this."

Sublime Beatitudo: (sublime = "to lift up or elevate"). This category, the most difficult to describe, encompasses a reach for fullness and perfection of happiness. The fullness, therefore, of goodness, beauty, truth and love. So we recognize in this category, those things that are, in a sense, beyond what we are capable of doing purely on our own.

This quest for fullness is pursued through the other happinesses but with a clear understanding that in the battle between happiness #3 and #2, happiness #3 must win out if we are to approach the transcendentals of this category:

(transcendental: from the latin words trans = above or over and scendere = to climb over or surmount). The transcendentals have traditionally included; truth, beauty and goodness. Note that all religions have some concept that they place in a position of ultimacy and fullness or completeness as well as some account of what keeps us from this condition of completeness (sin, desire, illusion etc.) and a remedy for it.

Christians believe that God is not only the Creator of the universe but is the One who keeps us all in being moment to moment by His Grace. According to the claims of the Christian faith, creation has a meaning and purpose and so do each one of us as creatures. The central aspect of God is love and this was the reason for the incarnation (literally "enfleshment") of God in His son Jesus Christ. Only God in Jesus is perfect and, according to Christians, our ultimate happiness is found in relationship with God through Jesus (prayer, obedience to his teachings etc.) who overcame sin (separation from God).

Christians believe that the fullness of the beatific vision (seeing God, or perfection, face-to-face) is something that we strive to move towards in life but will only be granted completely, after death. We get glimpses of the sublime nature of beauty, truth and goodness at rare moments in, perhaps, the arts (music, story, film) or nature or when we are loved by or love others. These experiences are deep and largely beyond words. Clearly to develop this category and pursue the depths of each category in this fourth level of happiness, is the work of a lifetime of open-ness, honesty and living/loving well.

It would be good to remember, while we all pursue happiness, to understand more fully, that we were made to rise to that final level of happiness.

It's that fullness that we're truly after and we harm ourselves and others when we decide to settle for less.

Friday, March 20, 2015

One of man’s persistent dreams is to find a good reason he can’t help sinning. It started with Adam’s trying to blame Eve. Modern man naturally turns to science for this, and as he has learned more about himself and the world around him, he has also grown more ingenious in finding ways to explain why he cannot help breaking the moral law. On the one hand we have cell phones and brain surgery, on the other sophisticated defenses of sexual treachery.

One popular excuse for sinning I call the “Margaret Mead Method.” I was reminded of it when flipping through my files and finding an article titled “The Virtues of Promiscuity,” the kind of title that gets your attention.

According to a journalist named Sally Lehrman, writing in The San Francisco Chronicle, anthropologists have found that “‘Slutty’ behavior is good for the species. Women everywhere have been selflessly engaging in trysts outside of matrimony for a good long time and for excellent reasons. Anthropologists say female promiscuity binds communities closer together and improves the gene pool.”

Some primitive tribes, these anthropologists claim, assume that women having sex with more than one man will help them survive, and even thrive. At least twenty “accept the principle that a child could, and ideally ought to, have more than one father.”

For all I know, this may be true. Every culture gets sex wrong, and female promiscuity may be these tribes’ peculiar way of getting it wrong. Sluttishness may be the sort of thing from which Christianity could deliver them, as it could deliver the American male whose culture demands sexual conquests as a sign of success.

As you might expect, the writer doesn’t leave it there.

We've sunk so low that now we look to science to support our tendency to build walls between ourselves and God.

My faith, I would like to think, has always been strong and my relationship with Christ has grown deep (in spite of my missteps and imperfections). But curiously as I grew older (and even after converting to Catholicism), I encountered a world that wanted to tell me that it was time to truly “grow up”. Religion is a myth. A fairy tale. A lark promising to explain the inexplicable while surreptitiously corralling free spirits. Professors in college, columnists in smart, fashionable magazines, authors of well-praised books sought to disabuse me of my “simple” notions of faith. Surely in the age of the Human Genome Project and the internet and space travel and evolutionary psychology – surely, it was time to retire the well-worn security blanket of God, to be finished with this quaint, silly, ridiculous, little faith and march forward as a liberated adult into the dazzling freedom of autonomy, personal fulfillment and assured happiness.

Surely.

But I am not so sure.

You see, the myth, the fairy tale, the lark I believe in says something just a bit more complex, offers something a touch more extraordinary, presents something a whiff more brilliant than the cardboard cut-out caricature of faith erected by its haughty, “enlightened” skeptics. In fact, it has always struck me that the most vocal critics of faith never seem to be talking about any faith that I have ever known or practiced. Perhaps in the midst of their considerable wisdom and insight, there are a few things these skeptics should honestly consider.

I originally wrote about The Passion of the Christ the week it opened in theatres. I stated how excited I had been before I saw the film and how disappointed I was afterwards. Many supported me in my views, many opposed me. Sadly, the majority of the latter were abusive. It was a sobering experience.

Months later, I have watched Mel Gibson’s version of the death of Jesus Christ on the newly released DVD. I still believe that this work should have been different in various ways. Yet now I have seen, or allowed myself to see, what lies at the very core of The Passion. The Eucharist.

The epicentre, the quintessence of the Christian faith, was no symbolic act but a literal instruction. “Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you.” And “Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven.”

What had been a barrier has now become a bridge. A connection between a broken, smashed and needy creature like me and his perfect and glorious creator. The great paradox of God. In so simple a matter as a wafer is the most wonderful gift in all the world. Given at a very great price indeed.

All of it should be read, and when read, these pertinent paragraphs should leap out at the reader:

Any spiritual journey is part intellectual, part emotional, part visceral, part supernatural. The path winds and turns and around each corner is revelation and wisdom. I’ve read a great deal of theology and have enormous respect for the great reformers. I love and know my Bible, including the passages that will surely be quoted to me by those who regret my swim across the Tiber.

Do not tell me about historical failings or current problems because I’ve heard them all. I’ve met lapsed Catholics and lousy Catholics as well as good Catholics and glorious Catholics. Not relevant. It is the truth of a belief, not the failure or success of alleged followers to live up to that truth, that is of importance.

I’m a miserable sinner. But at least I know it. Please pray for me. Or, if you can’t, try to tolerate me.

KCBS has learned that Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the principal church of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, has installed a watering system to keep the homeless from sleeping in the cathedral’s doorways.

The cathedral, at Geary and Gough, is the home church of the Archbishop. There are four tall side doors, with sheltered alcoves, that attract homeless people at night.

“They actually have signs in there that say, ‘No Trespassing,’” said a homeless man named Robert.

But there are no signs warning the homeless about what happens in these doorways, at various times, all through the night. Water pours from a hole in the ceiling, about 30 feet above, drenching the alcove and anyone in it.

The shower ran for about 75 seconds, every 30 to 60 minutes while we were there, starting before sunset, simultaneously in all four doorways.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco is, along with the Catholic St.Vincent de Paul Society, the largest supporter of services for the homeless in San Francisco. Every year, it helps many thousands of people through food, housing, shelter programs for people at risk includinghomeless mothers and families, and in countless other ways.

St. Mary's Cathedral is a huge partof that program, and does more than any other Catholic church. The Cathedral itself serves hundreds of homeless people giving them food and shelter, as an integral part of the San Francisco Interfaith Council's efforts in that regard, for example, opening its doors for shelter and food for fiveweeks over the holidays.

This sprinkler system in alcoves near our back doorways was installed approximately two years ago, after learning from city resources that this kind of system was being commonly used in the Financial District, asa safety, security and cleanliness measure to avoid the situation where needles, feces and other dangerous items were regularly beingleft in these hidden doorways. The problem was particularly dangerous because students and elderly people regularly pass these locations on their way toschool and mass every day.

When the system was installed, after other ideas were tried and failed, the people who were regularly sleeping in those doorways were informed in advance that the sprinklers were being installed. The idea was not to remove those persons, but to encourage them to relocate to other areas of the Cathedral, which are protected and safer. The purpose was to make the Cathedral grounds as well as the homeless people who happen to be on those grounds safer.

We are sorry that our intentions have been misunderstood and recognize that the method used was ill-conceived. It actually has had the opposite effect from what it was intended to do, and for this we are very sorry. We have also now learned that the system in the first place required a permit and may violate San Francisco water-use laws, and the work to remove this system has already started, and will be completed by the end of the day.

There are those claiming that this entire story is but yet another hit-piece against the Archbishop and particularly Catholicism. There's likely some truth to that. Nevertheless, the sprinkler system was a serious mistake impugning the dignity of those most affected.

He has written a letter to those same teachers thanking them for their work and encouraging them to literally keep the faith:

As one means of fulfilling this most serious responsibility, all of our schools currently have programs to help teachers give more effective witness to the Catholic faith. I support these programs. However, I also see a need to provide more clarity for our teachers. For this reason, I have developed a document that clarifies Catholic issues in our Catholic schools. At the outset, though, I wish to state clearly and emphatically that the intention underlying this document is not to target for dismissal from our schools any teachers, singly or collectively, nor does it introduce anything essentially new into the contract or the faculty handbook.

Many Catholics are at Variance with Church Teaching

At the same time, we need to face the current reality in society and the Church honestly, seriously and frankly: many people have opinions directly contrary to the natural moral law and the teaching of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, many Catholics themselves have beliefs at variance with Church teaching. This is simply a reality of our modern society. This reality stems in great part from the tremendous pressure the contemporary culture places on everyone to conform to a certain agenda at variance with, and often aggressively so, our Christian understanding of the human person and God’s purpose in creation. This pressure is exerted relentlessly in the media, in entertainment, in politics, in academia, in corporations – in short, in all of the influencers of popular culture. This problem in society in general is already serious enough, but when people in Catholic institutions endorse such views it creates a toxic confusion about our fundamental values among both students and others in society at large. As teaching institutions, therefore, Catholic schools have to be very clear about what constitutes the true teachings of the Catholic Church. They owe that to the teachers, to the students, and to the parents of the students.

Confusion on Sexual Morality and Religious Discpline

Confusion about the Church’s stance is prevalent in areas of sexual morality and religious discipline. For this reason, the statements for inclusion in the faculty handbook focus on these two areas. This focus does not imply lesser importance to Catholic teachings on social justice, which in fact are widely accepted and well interpreted in Catholic educational institutions. The areas requiring clarification are in Catholic teachings on sexual morality and religious practice.

Having clear statements especially about “hot button issues” related to faith and morals is important to teachers for two reasons. The first is that a forthright statement of the Church’s position on these issues helps teachers provide good perspectives to their students who often struggle in these areas.

The second reason is that candid formulation of Church doctrine protects those teachers who don’t agree with the statements. That sounds counterintuitive, but it is indeed the case. In a society in which confusion reigns about Church teachings, highlighting the controversial issues alerts teachers to avoid contradicting Church teaching on these issues either in the school or in some public way outside the classroom.

Dissenting from Catholic Teaching does not Promote Holiness

All teachers are expected to contribute to an atmosphere of holiness, virtue, and familiarity with the Gospel. How can this occur if not all teachers agree with Catholic teachings?

The way to assist teachers who distance themselves or privately oppose some Catholic teachings is to alert them to sensitive issues. Because the school fosters holiness, virtue and evangelization, teachers not knowledgeable about the precise contours of Catholic teaching have to be cautious about what they say in the school and what they do in the public sphere outside the Catholic school. Honest mistakes do happen, and when they do, reparation can be made. This is not in and of itself a cause for a teacher to be punished. At the same time, teachers and staff at Catholic high schools have to strive to present Catholic teachings as consistently as possible.Dissenting from Catholic teaching or the natural moral law in a Catholic high school does not promote holiness, virtue and evangelization.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

In the beginning we ate the fruit because we wanted to be God. We wanted to be the center of things. “You,” the serpent said, “will be like God!” And we ate the fruit. The Fall was the confluence of pride, idolatry, and selfishness. But it was also something else. The Fall resulted from warped vision. No longer was God, the true center of the universe, on the throne. We tried to displace him.

I like the way David Foster Wallace put it in his 2005 commencement address to Kenyon College:

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of you or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV or your monitor.

If this is true, that my default setting has become a kind of prideful self-centeredness, and if it is also true that I am not actually the center of the universe, then the question I must ask myself is, “How can I remove myself from the center of my own little universe?” Or, “How can I be removed from the center of my own little universe?”

I think it has to do with vision. I must see correctly in order to move correctly. My awareness of reality must align with God’s creative order. If I believe, for example, that I exist on this earth to survive, propagate, and derive as much pleasure from material goods and other people as possible, then I will fill my heart with new gadgets, rich feasts, and unending sexual experiences. (Or power, or authority, or whatever else suits my appetites.) If, however, I believe that I am not in fact the center of the universe, that I am not in fact my own creation, that I in fact do not dictate the terms of reality, then I will live entirely differently.

But to see correctly I must be aware of the truth. The key is awareness.

While Catholics have been swing voters since Richard Nixon’s second term, white Catholics are now identifying as Republican by historic margins. According to the most recent polling from the Pew Research Center, 53 percent of white Catholics now favor the GOP, versus 39 percent who favor the Democrats—the largest point spread in the history of the Pew poll. And for the first time, white Catholics are more Republican than the voting group usually considered the ultimate Republicans: white Protestants (a designation that includes both mainline and evangelical Protestants).

These are ominous signs for the Democrats, evincing a new and growing allegiance with the Republican Party that has long-term implications.

So why are white Catholics abandoning the Democratic Party? There are some long-term trends at play.

Monday, March 16, 2015

For the third time in the last few years, Al Gore, founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, spoke at the festival on Friday. Naturally, his interactive discussion focused on addressing the climate crisis. The former vice president focused on the need to “punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should pay a price for rejecting ‘accepted science,'” said the Chicago Tribune.

Gore said forward-thinking investors are moving away from companies that invest in fossil fuels and towards companies investing in renewable energy. “We need to put a price on carbon to accelerate these market trends,” Gore told the Chicago Tribune, referring to a proposed federal cap-and-trade system that would penalize companies that exceeded their carbon-emission limits. “And in order to do that, we need to put a price on denial in politics.”

...

The former Veep even gave a nod to Pope Francis during his talk, showing a slide of the pontiff and saying “How about this Pope?” Pope Francis celebrated his two-year anniversary as Pope on Friday, riding a wave of popularity “that has reinvigorated the Catholic Church in ways not seen since the days of St. John Paul II,” said the Chicago Tribune. Gore said he was looking forward to the Pope’s highly anticipated encyclical on the environment which is due to be released in June or July. “I’m not a Catholic,” Gore said, “but I could be persuaded to become one.”

A tiny voice tells me that hell would freeze over before Al Gore becomes Catholic but... hey... I'm open to the possibility.

I have to be honest. I was jarred when I first heard it. It was on a Tuesday night – a Lenten Reconciliation Service. The gorgeous sanctuary of our church was warmly lit and Richard, the music director, gingerly played beautiful, familiar, sweetened hymns on the piano. Lines were formed around the periphery of the sanctuary. Five priests were working overtime (as if there is a prescribed set of “working hours” in a priest’s life anyway) leaning in, comforting, consoling, absolving and sending. And people kept a respectful distance from the penitent in front of them.

I, too, was standing in line awaiting my turn to confess. I shifted from foot to foot as I wondered if I chose the right line, how long this would take, whether I should go home after a long day and try another time. But it was when I was five or six deep in line that I heard it. It was a heave. A deep inward breath. And it came from a well-dressed woman in her forties hunched forward in her seat before a priest. It wasn’t just a breath or a gasp. It was a sob. But it was only one. Simply slipping out. The cry pierced the sanctuary for only a split second before it was stifled by its owner who shortly after stood up, knelt in a nearby pew and wiped her eyes. She bent over in prayer and silently shook. Crying. Crying.

Feebly, I prayed for her – prayed that she would find peace.

It wasn’t long before she gathered herself up and walked out. She was well-dressed, composed if not a bit elegant. I had never seen her before and I may never see her again. Frankly, I’m not sure many others noticed what I had noticed – much less concerned themselves with what I was thinking about. But I couldn’t help wonder why that woman wept at Confession.

Now, to be honest (and I commend you if you are thinking this), it was none of my business. But I couldn’t help myself. What sort of sins, I wondered would make me cry in Confession, would make me shake, would make me pour the last ounce of my soul’s blackness out in the presence of a silent, but deeply attentive priest? What is it like to have that deep, raw and real honesty with my priest, my God and myself?

I'm reminded of my first confession after being away from the Church for more than 40 years. Something I chronicled here:

Throughout the week, the missus and I felt we were ready to participate in this Sacrament of Reconciliation and decided to do so just before Mass. We were both admittedly nervous, she manifesting that nervousness with shaking hands and a decidedly crimson face. I had a serious case of the butterflies. We both had a Reconciliationcheat sheet given to us during a related RCIA class and poured over it again just before entering. We decided I would go first.

And so I did.

Father Mike, who is blind, asked me if I wanted to sit across from him when I first knelt at the veiled divide behind which he was sitting. Somewhat chagrined (kneeling behind a veiled divide when you're confessing to a blind priest is kind of... silly... but hey, I was... nervous... cut me some slack), I did just that. And then we went through this oft criticized ritual. I can't tell you how meaningful it was, how holy, how... divine. It took a while to recite 40 years of transgressions (and let's not kid, we used the Decalogue as context and Father Mike walked me through them, reminding me of Christ's high view of each commandment) but we got through it.

I'll admit to all that I was emotional and faltered at times as a result. The holiness and sanctity of the event was at times overwhelming. Yet Father Mike, who is acting in persona Christi during this (and all Sacraments), gently guided me through it, balancing the seriousness of my sin with the mercy and forgiveness that defines the essence of the rite. It was, simply, beautiful. And I literally walked out of there feeling as if I'd shed 200 lbs.

But there was an additional moment that I think is worthy of exposing.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

The confessional is one of the most private and privileged places in the world. So when an Italian journalist violated the bond of trust between penitent and priest, the Archbishop of Bologna decried her “grave lack of respect” for all Catholics.

Laura Alari writes for Quotidiano Nazionale, which is headquartered in Bologna. She authored a series of four articles in the newspaper which disclosed the responses of priests in the area when she approached them under the pretext of seeking Confession.

Alari went to Confession several times, inventing delicate issues for herself: she pretended to be a lesbian mother asking to baptize her daughter; a woman who cohabitates with her same-sex partner; and a divorced and civilly remarried woman who receives Communion every Sunday.

She then reported the responses of priests when they heard her “confessions.”

Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna responded with a statement March 11: “In bewilderment at the incident and with a soul wounded by a profound sorrow, I mean to reiterate that these articles objectively constitute a grave offense against the truth of Confession, a sacrament of the Christian faith.”

He said Alari's articles “show a grave lack of respect for believers, who have recourse to it as one of the most precious of goods because it opens up to them the gifts of the mercy of God; and for confessors, by exposing them to the doubt of a possible deceit, which can disrupt the freedom of judgement, which is founded upon a relationship of trust with the penitent, like that between a father and son.”

The cardinal emphasized that Alari's articles were written by “deliberately tricking the confessor and thereby violating the sacredness of the sacrament, which as a first condition requires sincerity of contrition on the part of the penitent.”

Cardinal Caffarra recalled that the publication of the contents of a confession is among the most grave crimes in the Church, which are under the direct competence of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The following story, coming out of ever so tolerant San Francisco, gives evidence for even more disrespect:

San Franciscans are currently debating a simple question: Should the government respect the right of Catholic schools to be authentically Catholic?

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone thinks so. But eight California senators and assemblymen sent the archbishop a letter last month, saying that his actions in issuing new faculty guidelines “foment a discriminatory environment in the communities we serve.” On Feb. 23, two of the signers even asked the California Assembly Labor and Employment Committee and the Assembly Judiciary Committee to investigate the archdiocese’s actions.

Here’s the back story. During contract renegotiations with nearly 500 staff members last month, the archdiocese issued an updated faculty guide for its Catholic high schools. The addendum introduced three new clauses—which staff members are required to “affirm and believe”—denouncing masturbation, pornography, same-sex marriage, contraception and other issues that, in line with Catholic teaching, are described as “gravely evil.”

These beliefs shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the Catholic Church—the 2,000-year-old institution has clearly defined its moral teachings throughout the years. Yet lawmakers objected, contending in a Feb. 17 letter to the archdiocese that the new guide is “divisive.” They asserted that by spelling out the teachings of the Catholic Church and requiring high-school staff to not publicly undermine those teachings, teachers could be dismissed for private decisions not in accord with Catholic teaching.

The archbishop responded, calling the idea that the clauses could apply to an employee’s private life a “falsehood” in a Feb. 19 letter. Then he put a question to the lawmakers: “Would you hire a campaign manager who advocates policies contrary to those that you stand for, and who shows disrespect toward you and the Democratic Party in general?” Of course they wouldn’t, and Archbishop Cordileone summed up the problem: “I respect your right to employ or not employ whomever you wish to advance your mission. I simply ask the same respect from you.”

Archbishop Cordileone also explained that the mission of Catholic education is to ensure that students receive a complete education: intellectually, spiritually and morally. If teachers are to fulfill this goal, they must be consistent in what they teach in the classroom and in what they advocate in the public square.

Journalists and politicians, purveyors of prevarication, leading the charge against the Catholic Church.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Pope Francis said in an interview published on Friday he believes his pontificate will be short and that he would be ready to resign like his predecessor rather than ruling for life.

In the long interview with Mexican broadcaster Televisa, released on the second anniversary of his surprise election, Francis also said he "did not mind" being pope but would like to be able to go out in Rome unrecognized for a pizza.

"I have the feeling that my pontificate will be brief - four or five years, even two or three. Two have already passed. It's a somewhat strange sensation," he said, according to a Vatican translation from Spanish.

"I feel that the Lord has placed me here for a short time," the Argentine-born pontiff said.

Francis, apparently in good health at 78, said "I share the idea of what Benedict did." In 2013, former Pope Benedict became the first head of the Roman Catholic Church in 600 years to resign instead of ruling until he died.

"In general, I think what Benedict so courageously did was to open the door to the popes emeritus. Benedict should not be considered an exception, but an institution," Francis said.

However, he said he did not like the idea of an automatic retirement age for popes, such as at age 80.

“Look, life is in God's hands. I told the Lord: 'you are taking care of me. But if your will is that I die or that they do something to me, I ask you only one favor: that it doesn't hurt. Because I'm a big coward when it comes to physical pain,'” the Pope told La Carcova News in an interview published in this month's edition of their paper.

I pray that if his papacy becomes a short one, it's because he chose to make it so.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

"IS destroyed the front wall of St. George monastery to remove the big built in cross," Archimandrite Emanuel Youkhana, a member of the Assyrian Church of the East who runs a humanitarian aid effort out of Dohuk in northern Iraq, told Aleteia.

The crosses that stood on the dome and roof of the monastery had been removed by jihadists in December, similarl to what happened to the other churches in the territories controlled by the Islamic State. Local sources and the photo published by the Iraqi website confirms that the cemetery adjacent to the church, where the bodies of many Iraqi Christian soldiers killed during the Iraq-Iran war are buried, was destroyed.

In recent times, according to news confirmed by various sources, the monastery of St. George had been used by jihadists as a place of detention. In December, there were at least 150 prisoners who were transferred blindfolded and handcuffed, including some chief tribal Sunni opponents of the Islamic State and former members of the security apparatus, previously held in the prison in Badush. Previously, local sources had reported to Fides that groups of women were brought to the same monastery.

Erica Hunter, senior lecturer in Eastern Christianity at the University of London, explained in an email to Aleteia that Mar Gorgis was one of the oldest churches in Mosul.

"Daesh (I do not use the term ISIS/ISIL since it conveys some concept of a quasi-state) have destroyed mosques, tombs and other medieval sites, as well as the recent destruction of Nimrud, so regrettably I see the medieval churches of Mosul as being 'on their list' of cultural destruction, which of course undermines the morale of the local inhabitants," she said.

Nineveh Yakou, Assyrian Archaeologist and Director of Cultural Heritage and Indigenous Affairs at A Demand for Action, told IBTimes UK that the monastery was founded by the Assyrian Church of the East in the 10th century but rebuilt as a seminary by the Chaldean Catholic Church in 1846.

"The current monastery was built on an archeological site containing ancient Assyrian ruins. It was an important show of continuity from the Assyrian to our culture," Yakou said.

"Isis is wiping out the cultural heritage of Iraq. The monastery was classified as cultural heritage. It's a cultural and ethnic cleansing."

A travesty taking place before the world's eyes... and the world does... pretty much nothing about it.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

I just had the absolute worst experience ever during mass, at my Abuela’s funeral no less. I wasn’t going to post about here but I feel I have a duty to warn you all. If you ever happen to find yourself visiting the Tidewater area of Virginia and need to go to mass… just drive right by St. Therese in Chesapeake. Simply make the sign of the cross and keep on driving. Don’t look back. Trust me.

But of course, feel free to completely ignore my advice if you like your tabernacle located near the church office, absolutely love ginormous burlap banners, and simply loathe kneelers. Perhaps you find it charming and personable that the Sign of Peace last twenty minutes long because the priest likes to walk around and shake everyone’s hand. How friendly, right?

Maybe those stodgy, formal processions aren’t your thing either and you like a little a warm up how-we-doing-this-morning routine before you get down to mass-y business.

But if sacrilege is your cup tea, boy oh boy, is this parish just for you – especially if you have complete and utter disrespect for the Eucharist and disdain for those disgusting “traddies” that like to receive on the tongue. I mean gross, right? Yeah, to hell with those people. Lets just be jerks to them at their grandmother’s funeral.

I mean I’ve heard stories about priests refusing to give communion to people kneeling or on the tongue before but have never witnessed it myself. I just had such a hard time believing a priest could be so poorly formed or dismissively casual with the Eucharist.

Woa, wait a minute, Katrina.

This is the internet and everyone reading this will know exactly who are talking about.

The Anchoress (who was one of those faithful and gentle Catholics who set me straight) has an opinion or two on the subject, here she is in part:

I despise these “pita communions” even when the pita is rendered within the specifications of the RS, and for a very simple reason: crumbs.

Pitas crumble. The altar becomes laden with tiny, sometimes microscopic bits of the Flesh and Blood of Christ. In disbursal, more crumbs. They get knocked or windswept to the ground with our movements. Thus the Body of Christ is trod underfoot (or sucked into a vacuum and disposed of thoughtlessly) and this is a grave insult to His Presence.

I recall reading a story about Dorothy Day, how a priest performed Mass in her home and — because he was all groovy and “simple” he used an earthenware coffee mug for the Precious Blood. After the Mass, Day kissed the coffee mug, then shattered it and buried, so it would never be used for anything as mundane as coffee again. I wonder how she would feel about all of this. I think she’d be scandalized, by the pitas, by the lack of piety, by the push-along.

Some things you Just. Don’t. Do. One of them is subject His Majesty to your own conceited ideas of what is “humble” and befitting his Body and Blood, or presuming to know what demonstrates “unity with the poor.” A cousin of mine, a Capuchin who has long-served the poor, learned how much they hated seeing Christ’s Body offered to them from straw baskets and jelly glasses: it caused them pain. They wondered if, because they were poor, they to be denied a measure of Christ’s beauty and grandeur so common to the middle classes and above?

My cousin learned to buff up the good stuff and use it, in honor of both Christ Jesus and the poor who sought him.

"He went from being a little inaccurate and didn't throw a whole lot of spirals, to throwing very accurate and real good at spinning the ball," House said.

The quarterbacks coach wasn't sure if Tebow would appear at the next veteran's combine on March 22 in Phoenix (prior to the NFL owners' meetings there) but Tebow's name has been floated multiple times as a possible participant.

Here's hoping he gets a shot at it. He's an outstanding guy who deserves that shot.